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<h1 class="entry-title" style="font-size:21px;font-weight:700;list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 5px;padding:0px">
The USA and Russia: Two Sides of the Same Criminal Corporate Coin </h1>
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Posted By
<cite style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px;padding:0px">Dan Corjescu</cite>
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July 18, 2018 @ 1:55 am
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<blockquote style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"><p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world<br style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px;padding:0px">
Like a Colossus, and we petty men<br style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px;padding:0px">
Walk under his huge legs and peep about<br style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px;padding:0px">
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">— Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”</p></blockquote>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">There are many modern myths. One of them is about the events of 1989 as being the culmination of a grand historical struggle for freedom and liberty.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">Nothing could be farther from the truth.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">For years prior to 1989 the West through a combination of both legal business and criminal activity had interpenetrated the Communist elites with lucrative deals and promises of all kinds.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">This situation was even more pronounced in “non-aligned” Yugoslavia who for years had maintained CIA and American and West European business contacts.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">In effect, the “cold war” witnessed a rapid convergence between the economic and power interests of both Western and Communist elites.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">The “Communists” (in name only of course) quickly realized the economic benefits available to them through at times open at times clandestine cooperation with Western business/criminal interests.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">Eventually, Communist elites realized that they had an unprecedented economic opportunity on their hands: state privatization made possible, in part, with active Western participation.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">For them, “Freedom” meant the freedom to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">And the 1990’s were just that. A paradise for thieving on an unimaginable scale all under the rubric of the rebirth of “capitalism and freedom”.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">The true outcome of that decade was that the old communist elites not only retained their social and political power behind the scenes; they also were able to enrich themselves beyond anything the communist dictatorships could ever hope to offer them in the past.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">Yes, the price was to give up imperial, national, and ideological ambitions. But it was a very small price to pay; since the East European elites had ceased to believe in any of those things years earlier.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">The only firm belief they still held was the economic betterment of themselves and their families through the acquisition by any means of as many asset classes as possible. In effect, they became the mirror image of their “enemy” the “imperialist capitalist West”.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">This was not a case of historical dialectics but historical convergence. What appeared as a world divided was actually a world waiting to be made whole through the basest of criminal business activity.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">But being clever thieves they knew how to hide themselves and their doings behind superficially morally impeccable figures such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, to name just a few. These “dissidents” would be the faces they would use to make a good part of the world believe that 1989 was a narrative of freedom and not outright pubic theft which it was.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">Yes, people in the east, even in Russia, are freer now than they were. But it should never be forgotten that the events of 1989/1990 were not even remotely about those revolutionary dreams.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">It was about something much more mundane and sordid. It was about greed. It was about the maintenance of power. And finally it was about money.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">How deep has the Western nexus of power and wealth gone into the heart of the East? So far indeed that one can easily question to what extent a country like Russia is truly a “national” state anymore and rather just a territory open to exploitation by both local and global elites.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">For that matter, we can ask the same question about the USA.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">Today, and for a long time, the USA and Russia are two sides of the same criminal corporate coin.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">That Trump and Putin are seemingly almost interchangeable on an aesthetic level should not be a jarring surprise to anyone.</p>
<p style="list-style-type:none;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;word-wrap:break-word">We have totally converged.</p>
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